On the scope of my tweets

I use twitter for musings and pointers. A few of these musings and pointers are of rather personal nature, but most of them concern items, questions, phenomena, resources which are in some way or other of potential relevance to people interested in the renaissance and/or renaissance studies. I rarely tweet directly about items, questions, phenomena, and resources which I come across and which are of potential relevance concerning renaissance intellectual history and renaissance philosophy (a sub-field of renaissance studies), as such items, questions, phenomena, and resources are in the main focus of my interests, and dealt with not in my direct tweets, but in Web4Ren Forum (W4RF). I suggest that you go (at least also) there if one of your interests is in renaissance intellectual history and/or renaissance philosophy.

However: Nota valde bene: Since of 2011-08-01: my activities on twitter concerning "rinascimental" topics have been more or less reduced to RTs and things like that. To read other posts and pointers by me concerning such topics: please encircle me on Google plus (where you can find me at https://plus.google.com/109713292962660564110/) and let me know that you'd like me to add you to my "Renaissance studies" circle. (Unless you are in that circle there: you'll miss quite a number of my G+ posts on matters related to Renaissance studies.) But anyone can see my posts to the Renaissance Studies (sensu largo)-"Community" on G+.

On prefixes found as part of my tweets

Once upon a time Twitter had RSS-feeds. Now they are gone. And back then I expected that many of those potentially interested in my tweets would want to access (and (pre-)filter!) them via some sort of RSS-reader, using http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/28076637.rss instead of http://twitter.com/hckGGREN as their point of entry/access: and hence most of my my tweets did come with prefix-tags to make such filtering easier. As these RSS-feeds no longer exist: starting 2013-06-13 I stopped using such prefixes. What follows in this section here just documents what was possible and sensible in the past.

Ren:

"Ren:" is used for "Renaissance": tweets with this prefix deal with things of potential relevance for those interested in the renaissance and/or renaissance studies qua persons with such interests. ¶ Subcategories are "Ren: bk:" for information on printed books, "Ren: CFP" for calls for papers/proposals, "Ren: conf.:" for information on conferences, "Ren: job:" for information on jobs, fellowships, etc., and "Ren: RT" for retweeted items authored by others. Tweets prefaced by "Ren:" and not using one of these subcategories are likely to be about primary or secondary literature available somehow freely in electronic form.

nR:

"nR:" is used for "not Renaissance": tweets without any directly renaissance-related content: · digital humanities, · library and information science, · IT, · university and research politics, · academic life, · contemporary events and situations, which are in some degree similar or in contrast to rinascimental events and situations, ·indicia that I might be a living human being, · miscellanea, … .

// W4RF:

Tweets with this prefix are pointers to new items in Web4Ren Forum (W4RF) which have been sent to my twitter-feed automatically via a third-party service. Please note that not all new items in Web4Ren Forum (W4RF) are alerted to via such an automated tweet in my twitter feed: the third-party service is good, but not perfect. And: this third-party service does also relay information on posts to/on Web4Ren Forum (W4RF) which were not made by me but by other members of that forum (which IMO is a good thing). This is one prefix which will remain!

@xyz

Tweets starting directly with @ are replies to tweets (and in rare cases DMs) by other users of twitter.

RT

Retweets (both of Renaissance related items and other items) which I wanted to share with my followers, but did deem too long (or too ephemeral) to preface them with either "nR" or "Ren", and which are normally sent via twitters new RT feature.

anything else — or nothing

Tweets of mine not starting with either "Ren:" or "nR:" or "// W4RF" or "@" or "RT" are indicating that I did tweet too carelessly.

On following and being followed

If you decide to follow me on twitter: don't expect me to follow you back: my mental capacities are limited, and thus I restrict myself to following only those twitterers the tweets of whose are in some way or other of major interest to me.

If I follow you: there's no reason at all to feel in any way obliged to follow me back. You are welcome to follow me back, but I don't expect you to do so. It's your choice. I follow you because I consider your tweets as interesting to me, not because I think you should think that my tweets are relevant to you.

If I should un-follow you: please accept my apologies: My interests do vary and are fluctuating, and my capacities as a reader of tweets are limited, and therefore the list of accounts which I do follow does change too.

On blocking

I do "block" following accounts rather reluctantly, trying to err on the side of caution.

But I do block accounts tweeting something which I consider as offending me and at the same time as apt to deter people to have a look at my account if they have seen the follower's account. And I do block accounts which are keyed to promoting activities or products likely to damage communication via twitter if successful. And I do block accounts which as far as I can see are run by robots and do exist for the sole purpose of promoting some sort of commercial product.

If you find out that I have blocked you, and think I should reconsider that decision: please let me know via an email to hck@lrz.uni-muenchen.de with "twitter block" somewhere in the subject line.

On lists

I use lists to organise the accounts I follow into categories, mainly as a statistical tool for myself. As of now all of my lists (except one: a shortlist which I'm using when I'm extremely short of time) are "public" although I don't assume that they will be useful to anybody but me.

Miscellaneous

On making "Follow Friday" recommendations:

As of 2010-11-26 I stopped recommending accounts/twitterers via the #FF-hashtag and/or the FollowFriday — because "doing" these FFs in my eyes seemed and seems to be extremely unfair to all the twitterers who I follow for a good reason, but who are not selected for an FF on each and any Friday. If you want to know whom I think to merit especially to be followed: just have a look at the list of accounts followed by me.

On receiving "Follow Friday" recommendations:

Yes, I'm grateful for (almost) all of those mentioning my account. No, they don't have any perceptible influence on the number of accounts following mine.

Anything else?

If you think there's something else which should address in this document here, and/or if you think this document here could be improved in some other way: please let me know. Thanks in advance!